KUALA LUMPUR – Moody’s Investors Service has changed the global airline industry outlook to positive from negative, reflecting its expectations of widespread increases in air travel starting in the second half of the year and accelerating through 2022.
In a statement today, the ratings agency said it expects the trend to run for the quarters into 2023.
“Increasing coronavirus vaccinations around the globe will allow governments to lower barriers to entry for visitors and re-entry for residents returning home.
“Leisure traffic will lead the charge to the boarding gates, while corporate trips and international long-haul will follow, initially at slower paces.”
It said the restoration of the ability to travel will relieve the tremendous pent-up demand to fly to visit friends and relatives and for vacations.
“We expect offices in many countries to begin reopening in large numbers by the fall of 2021 (September 22 to December 21), which will facilitate the beginning of the recovery of corporate travel.
“We also expect long-haul international demand to pick up by the end of 2021, driven by the same factors that will spur leisure and corporate travel.”
The industry outlook had been negative since March 6 last year.
Moody’s said it will consider changing the outlook to stable if the expectation of the annual growth rate of air travel demand across major markets, measured by the percentage change in revenue passenger kilometres, slows below 15%.
“We will change the outlook to negative if we expect travel demand to decline.
“A lack of efficacy of vaccines against potential future variants of Covid-19 would be the likely driver of falling demand.” – Bernama, May 11, 2021
